tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
She stands, spinning sunlight upon the beach. It peels in slender rays from her body as if she were a piece of the sun, fallen away. He believes that she is, for all that she has left her marks upon his heart.
For a monk whose only study should have been his goddess, he knows the moment Elena breaks. He sees it in the widening of her eyes, the way they shimmer dark and light reminiscent of sunlight playing across the waves. In a moment, in a dip of her gilded lashes she reveals the depth of her pain. But it is gone in a moment, in the blink of an eye she adorns herself in strength. Yet still she is gentle in her strength. Elena stands as bold as a tree before his oncoming hurricane (for he is running to her). The sand sprays where his feet fall and darkness descends fast and thick and terrible.
The Stallion reaches her, his darkness pressing, pressing upon the gold of her. His shadows remind themselves of her light, they press upon the curves of her body. The monk looks over her, searching, searching. SHe looks as she always has, slim and full of delicate curves. Her fine bones paint her as fragile as a dove, but he knows the lion heart that beats within her breast.
Her words, her words fill the air. First his name tumbling from her tongue like a litany. (It is still agony to hear it come from her lips). Then her words, filled with bravery sharp with the sting of their bite.
Gods. He has missed her.
His eyes close, for he knows how he has hurt her, Still her agony whispers to him, he still feels the echo of that dark look. Mere seconds, but he feels it for months. He would whisper another apology, he would press his lips into her neck and beg again for her forgiveness. Or at least the monk thinks he would, until he realises that he would not be here, she had demanded so. Told him never to return. He wished to honour her again, he wished to give himself wholly to Caligo again. And he had. Until Moira, until her revelation…
“Is it true?” Tenebrae breathes, suddenly frantic, suddenly his body too small, his skin too thin to contain the maelstrom of emotions that clamour at his insides. He searches her again and again. His eyes pressing upon her golden skin, her curves, looking, looking, looking. Then beyond, out to her sides where he expects a child to stand, watching. There is nothing. Elena is as she has always been. There is no child here. He is overjoyed.
He is bereft.
“Do you have a child?” The Disciple asks and the words tangle themselves within his throat, disorientated with anger, battling with hope. Oh to have a child! It is joy and it is horror. Tenebrae is a condemned man, his sight is soon to be gone and oh, to just see his child once.
